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Non Gaming Discussions => Off-Topic => Topic started by: GmanJoe on January 27, 2009, 07:11:56 AM
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Senate OKs 4-month delay to digital TV changeover
By JOELLE TESSLER
Associated Press Writer
Posted: Monday, Jan. 26, 2009
WASHINGTON The Senate on Monday voted unanimously to postpone the upcoming transition from analog to digital television broadcasting by four months to June 12 - setting the stage for Congress to pass the proposal as early as Tuesday.
Monday\'s Senate vote is a big victory for the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress, who have been pushing for a delay amid growing concerns that too many Americans won\'t be ready for the currently scheduled Feb. 17 changeover.
The Nielsen Co. estimates that more than 6.5 million U.S. households that rely on analog television sets to pick up over-the-air broadcast signals could see their TV sets go dark next month if the transition is not postponed.
"Delaying the upcoming DTV switch is the right thing to do," said Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., author of the bill to push back the deadline. "I firmly believe that our nation is not yet ready to make this transition at this time."
The issue now goes to the House, where Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., has vowed to work with House leaders to bring Rockefeller\'s bill up for a floor vote on Tuesday.
President Barack Obama earlier this month called for the transition date to be postponed after the Commerce Department hit a $1.34 billion funding limit for government coupons that consumers may use to help pay for digital TV converter boxes. The boxes, which generally cost between $40 and $80 each and can be purchased without a coupon, translate digital signals back into analog ones for older TVs.
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the arm of the Commerce Department administering the program, is now sending out new coupons only as older, unredeemed ones expire and free up more money. The NTIA had nearly 2.6 million coupon requests on a waiting list as of last Wednesday.
Jonathan Collegio, vice president for the digital television transition for the National Association of Broadcasters, argues that the Nielsen numbers may overstate the number of viewers who are not ready for the digital transition. He noted that the numbers exclude consumers who have already purchased a converter box but not yet installed it, as well as those who have requested coupons but not yet received them.
What\'s more, consumers who subscribe to cable or satellite TV service or who own a TV with a digital tuner will not lose reception.
Still Gene Kimmelman, vice president for federal policy at Consumers Union, argues that millions of Americans - particularly low-income and elderly viewers - will pay the price because "the government has failed to deliver the converter boxes these people deserve just to keep watching free, over-the-air broadcast signals."
In 2005, Congress required broadcasters to switch from analog to digital signals, which are more efficient, to free up valuable chunks of wireless spectrum to be used for commercial wireless services and interoperable emergency-response networks.
Republicans in both the House and Senate have raised concerns that a delay would confuse consumers, burden wireless companies and public safety agencies waiting for the airwaves that will be vacated and create added costs for television stations that would have to continue broadcasting both analog and digital signals.
Paula Kerger, president and CEO of the Public Broadcasting Service, estimates that delaying the digital TV transition to June 12 would cost public broadcasters $22 million.
But Rockefeller managed to ease some of these concerns by allowing broadcast stations to make the switch from analog to digital signals sooner than the June deadline if they choose and by permitting public safety agencies to take over vacant spectrum that has been promised to them as soon as it becomes available.
Associated Press writer Andrew Taylor contributed to this report.
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*sigh*
How fucking hard is it to get a converter box? Honestly, they\'re practically free.
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We must be talking about seriously poor people here. People who couldn\'t swing 40 bucks in the last year and a half or however long. They might be pushing it back so people get their tax refund or a stimulus check or something and if they don\'t use that, then they can go back to listening to the radio.
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I still see people buying the converter boxes every time I\'m in Best Buy. Most of the problem is just people putting things off to the last second. Just as it was put off till now it\'ll be put off till June all the same.
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I agree with the above. I don\'t think we need to help people maintain access to a nonessential service like broadcast television. Maybe one could argue that television supports some public services like news reporting, emergency broadcasts, and election coverage, but for the most part it is an entertainment product.
I think this delay is mostly an effort to support the broadcast networks, which will be struck by a drop in viewers. The cable and satellite networks should be unaffected. Maybe they would even benefit, if some people elect to purchase cable service instead of the digital television converter box.
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We must be talking about seriously poor people here. People who couldn\'t swing 40 bucks in the last year and a half or however long. They might be pushing it back so people get their tax refund or a stimulus check or something and if they don\'t use that, then they can go back to listening to the radio.
They get coupons too on top of it. I don\'t know off hand how much it gives a discount since I have cable and don\'t care how much it costs but as far as I know, it knocks out a good percentage of the cost.
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The reason they are delaying it is because the government ran out of coupons.
And you can\'t really blame Obama on this one seeing as to how it was originally supposed to be shut off a couple years ago.
You have to be really poor and/or completely in the dark to need one of these things.
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Yeah... i\'m slightly peeved at this as well... can\'t really blame Obama for this as the vote in congress was UNANIMOUS. I wish they would just flip the switch and be done with it... we\'ve known about it for fucking years. Every other commercial break has something about it... been like that for the past 6 months.
Bitches!
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The reason they are delaying it is because the government ran out of coupons.
And you can\'t really blame Obama on this one seeing as to how it was originally supposed to be shut off a couple years ago.
You have to be really poor and/or completely in the dark to need one of these things.
I would think that those people who can\'t afford the 40 dollars for the converter box can\'t even afford a tv....unless they go to Goodwill and buy a 1970s tv for 15 bucks.
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I would think that those people who can\'t afford the 40 dollars for the converter box can\'t even afford a tv....unless they go to Goodwill and buy a 1970s tv for 15 bucks.
And pay $100 to deliver the 250 lb console TV to their home.
(https://psx5central.com/community/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ftechnabob.com%2Fblog%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2007%2F05%2Fold_tv_matrix.jpg&hash=9b64e7ea2b74a727c616743c783deeb489d2bf5d)
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It really doesn\'t effect us at all that it hasn\'t happened yet. It\'s not like we are itching to use that part of the spectrum personally.
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The delay was voted down anyway. The digital switch is still on.
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It really doesn\'t effect us at all that it hasn\'t happened yet. It\'s not like we are itching to use that part of the spectrum personally.
Yep. The only thing that we stand to gain is another commercial in place of the go-digital ads.
This is about freeing up signals for the feds to communicate on, right?
So if we keep our antenna sets I can expect to intercept secure government communications instead of The Price is Right?
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yeah. It just gives the feds more spectrum to lease out.
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I would think that those people who can\'t afford the 40 dollars for the converter box can\'t even afford a tv....unless they go to Goodwill and buy a 1970s tv for 15 bucks.
You can get free converters or $30 off everywhere now.
Furthermore.....
I do not see the big deal anyway. If you have a digital TV, you are watching digital most of the time anyway.
Or am I missing something?
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Most Digital TV has built in digital tuner for [COLOR="Cyan"][SIZE="4"]free[/SIZE][/COLOR] digital over the air broadcast viewing. All you need is a good antenna and hook it up to the same RF coaxial connector and you are set.
I think almost all digital TV that were made on or after 2006 has built in over the air digital tuner as requires by the law. Digital tuner aka ATSC tuner are very cheap to produce nowadays.
For the TVs that were made before 2006, say either analog TV or small screen hdtv that doesn\'t have digital tuner built in, get the converter box makes sense to get [SIZE="4"][COLOR="Cyan"]free[/COLOR][/SIZE] digital over the air broadcast channels on your analog 480i tv.
oh yeah, for those that uses rabbit ears antenna to watch analog over the air channels, you can use the same existing rabbit ears antenna to get over the air digital reception too.
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I think back in late 1997 when ATSC tuner set top box was first made, they are very big, about the size of an a/v receiver, they are very expensive, and the reception back then wasn\'t as good as nowadays. Back then, say around 1998, an ATSC tuner set top box cost about $2,000.
Nowadays, you can get an ATSC tuner set top box for $99 or less, and an ATSC tuner without the set top box but built inside the tv for under $50, as little as $20. The ATSC tuner is much smaller in size too as the improvement in shrinking the chip, thus also reduce heat and electric energy consumption too.
the converter box is the same as the ATSC tuner set top box, except that it can only output 480i resolution and thus cost about $50 - 60. The converter box is for SDTV or analog 480i TV that doesn\'t have hd tuner built in.
One more thing, i think nearly all tv made nowadays, doesn\'t matter if it\'s analog tv or digital hdtv, they all have digital tuner built in as requires by the law. So if you bought a new tv recently say within the last 2 years or just now, way more than likely your new tv has digital tuner built in. So you don\'t need the converter box for the new tv.
you can use the converter box for your old tv that doesn\'t have digital tuner built-in like your analog sdtv in your bedroom for instance.
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I think back in late 1997 when ATSC tuner set top box was first made, they are very big, about the size of an a/v receiver, they are very expensive, and the reception back then wasn\'t as good as nowadays. Back then, say around 1998, an ATSC tuner set top box cost about $2,000.
Nowadays, you can get an ATSC tuner set top box for $99 or less, and an ATSC tuner without the set top box but built inside the tv for under $50, as little as $20. The ATSC tuner is much smaller in size too as the improvement in shrinking the chip, thus also reduce heat and electric energy consumption too.
the converter box is the same as the ATSC tuner set top box, except that it can only output 480i resolution and thus cost about $50 - 60. The converter box is for SDTV or analog 480i TV that doesn\'t have hd tuner built in.
One more thing, if you bought a new tv recently say within the last 2 years or just now, way more than likely your new tv has digital tuner built in. So you don\'t need the converter box for the new tv.
you can use the converter box for your old tv that doesn\'t have digital tuner built-in like your analog sdtv in your bedroom for instance.
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Most people that buy an HDTV though (I would say the vast vast majority) likely have cable or satellite to get HD programming. I could be wrong on this but broadcast stations now don\'t broadcast in HDTV over the air, just through cable or satellite. They may shoot in HD but don\'t put it in the air for people with rabbit ears. Vid, am I right about that?
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yes you are wrong on that. ATSC digital broadcasting does broadcast HD video ota. That just shows how misinformed you are. ATSC max bitrate is 19.8 mbps. the specs is like this, maximum resolution is 1920 x 1080i @ 60 fps or 1280 x 720p @ 60 fps at 19.8 mbps max in MPEG-2 compression. ATSC supports dolby digital 5.1 channels too.
MPEG-2 is a fixed resolution, so each channel has to be specify to a native resolution, so Fox channel is 720p, ABC is 720p, UPN is 720p, while CBS, NBC, KCAL are 1080i....etc...
So if you have a resolution that is not native to the channel\'s resolution, then it will either convert by upscale or downscale to that resolution. say for instance 480i sources will upscale to 720p for Fox channel or 1080i sources will scale to 720p...
indoor rabbit ears antenna or any antenna can receive digital signal, and all it does it just receive the signal, and in this case the 19.8 mbps max digital signal...then the digital tuner either inside the tv or the converter box receive the signal and decode the MPEG-2 and the tv or the converter box will process the digital signal data.
Its just that cable and satellite has better antenna which looks like a dish antenna where the size is bigger, and place on rooftop, and single path direction, so which means you get a lot better reception than a regular antenna. In this case, a you get much higher percentage of digital signal for nearly all of your channels broadcast. The thing about cable and satellite is that they are not free, but have a lot of channel selections. Another different is they use the newer codec of MPEG-4 for digital broadcast and the max bitrate for most 720p and 1080i is like 13 mbps, while many runs at 9 mbps to have more space for adding more channels.
HD 9 mbps MPEG-4 might looks as good as HD 19 mbps MPEG-2, and in some cases lesser noticeable compression artifacts. Even though the bitrate is lower than MPEG-2, but there are drawbacks as the picture might look slightly softer, and there are more noticeable color streaks while MPEG-2 looks finer and lesser noticeable color streaks, but has noticeable compression artifacts on scenes with lots of action going on.
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Executive Summary:
You are wrong on that. ATSC digital broadcasting does broadcast HD video OTA.
Fox channel is 720p, ABC is 720p, UPN is 720p, while CBS, NBC, KCAL are 1080i....etc...
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Thanks core. Just wanted a yes or no answer :)
In my tv class, we didn\'t go into depth of the digital switch and the specifics of how they broadcast HD. We were just told that they could have something like 3-5 channels of standard definition or 1-2 channels of HD on the digital spectrum.